


musica universalis

by flirtygaybrit



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:22:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22392451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flirtygaybrit/pseuds/flirtygaybrit
Summary: Plagued by nightmares, scopolamine, and owls, Geralt tries simply not dreaming, while Dandelion discovers a suitable bed and a lack of time outside Regis's cottage.Set withinBaptism of Fire. Minor spoilers for plot points in the novel series.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 128
Collections: Abby's Witcher Collection, Best Geralt





	musica universalis

It was far quieter outside Emiel Regis’s summer cottage than it was on the inside, and to Geralt, who was not sober enough to maintain his usual calm rationality yet not drunk enough to forget entirely that he was supposed to be somewhat irritated with his inebriated companions, it was like the difference between sitting in a hot spring and sitting in an ice bath: one environment seemed to make his hair stand on end, and the other allowed him to peel his shoulders away from his ears and give a sigh of relief. 

Though it was still only summer, the night air had taken on a severe chill. It wasn’t cold enough for Geralt to see his breath, nor was it cold enough to dissuade the nocturnal wildlife from chorusing unseen in the grass, but he knew that the women and children, the refugees from Kernow who had traveled with the company of Geralt, Dandelion, Zoltan, Percival and the rest, were well bundled up where they had set up a small encampment under the hagberry shrubs; the air felt good on his skin anyway, and seemed to be helping cool the blood that had seemed to be boiling only moments before, when Milva had shouted after him and Dandelion had tried to push that cursed flask of moonshine into his hand again. Luckily, the closed door flap seemed enough to keep their yammering at bay, and allowed Geralt a moment of peace as he gazed up at the stars. The strange herbal smell that permeated the entirety of the barber-surgeon’s cozy lodgings, however, seemed to have followed him out of doors, which meant he would have to find a spot where no doors existed.

The other side of the building seemed to satisfy those conditions. Geralt found a lovely little bush in a patch of unkempt grass near one back corner of the shack and crawled beneath it and, deciding that he was still too sober to fall asleep immediately and that his knee ached too badly for him to try anyway, proceeded to gaze up at the sky once more.

Unobscured by the smoke from fires which had dogged their journey from Brokilon along that tributary called the O and through the ravines and gorges that had led them to Fen Carn, the entirety of the universe seemed visible; the constellations stood against the inky backdrop of the heavens like glistening dewdrops in a field, the moon bathed the shack in a light that he found more suitable than the light from a fire, and Geralt couldn’t help but think of Ciri once more. _Maybe she can see the sky from wherever she is,_ he thought, forcing his mind not to entertain the possibility that she was imprisoned far underground, so deeply buried in some dungeon that the light of day would not reach her. _Maybe she can see the moon, its phase, the position of the stars maybe she understands how much time has passed… or maybe the sky in Nilfgaard is red, red like the raging fires and the deepest depths of hell, and devils and hellfire and death are all that surround her._

He was jerked from his thoughts, and perhaps from a doze, by the suddenly increased volume of the indoors cacophony, which along with the wafting herby scent of the interior of Regis’s shack suggested that someone had stepped outside.

“Psst. Geralt. Are you out here? Have you gone missing on us? Helloo-oo?”

Geralt took a breath and lay still, hoping that it was not Regis who was searching for him, but unfortunately he was able to recognize that all logic pointed to another culprit. The footsteps were not the distinct, steady gait of a sober man, and the voice was not that of a dwarf, or a woman, or a parrot. Luckily, the only one left was headed in the opposite direction, and gave away his position with the sort of volume that only drunken men used to louder environments used.

“You’re not Geralt… _you’re_ not Geralt… Pegasus… aha! Roach. I knew he wouldn’t leave you behind. Which means he’s not! Far!”

Dandelion was half-yelling, as though he expected that simply accusing Geralt of being nearby would cause the Witcher to reveal himself like some invisible lurking creature, which was evidently not the case. Geralt could hear one of the refugees quietly shushing Dandelion from a distance, and he heard the bard’s embarrassed apologies as he stumbled around the opposite side of the shack.

“Ah well, suit yourself, you old devil… probably gone off to sleep in the bushes and be eaten by a ghoul… or a graveir… Hell’s teeth, Geralt, it’s freezing out here, where are you…”

Geralt could see quite well by the moon and starlight—although not nearly half as well as he could have if he’d refused Regis’s flask—but there was no source of light following Dandelion’s voice, which indicated that he was quite literally stumbling around in the dark, and was probably even more likely to be eaten by a ghoul or a graveir than Geralt was. 

“Ow! Why, you nasty little… poor excuse for a shrub… Geralt? Are you back here? Have you been eaten yet, or should I continue my search?”

Dandelion rounded the backside of the shack after spending a moment cursing out the shrubbery that he must have stumbled into on the opposite side, but was still not yet close; without giving away his position, Geralt observed the bard as he moved into view, now taking cautious and over-exaggerated steps to avoid tripping in the grass or into any other bushes. Had it not been so sad to see him whipping his head this way and that at every noise that he heard in the glade and almost losing his balance in the process, Geralt might have even let it continue.

“You’ll wake up half the Continent doing that,” he said without raising his voice. 

Dandelion’s head, and the egret’s feather sitting upon his hat like a weathervane, swiveled as swiftly as an owl’s.

“Who—who said that?”

“I hear only an owl,” Geralt replied. “Now try asking where instead, but not too loudly.” 

Dandelion let out a victorious huff and began to move in his direction, squinting suspiciously at every shadow within sight. There was no window to cast firelight over the grass, and the forest’s edge was close enough that any rational man should have been wary of the deep darkness that lay within… only Dandelion was quite drunk and not particularly rational, and was too large to be mistaken by any owl for prey, or by any prey for an owl. “I’m afraid if I ask _where_ … I might happen upon a hungry wolf.” 

He walked past Geralt, shuffling carefully to the other side of the cabin, bringing with him the strong scent of distilled mandrake, which even from a short distance made Geralt’s taste buds ache and eyes water; he rested his hands on his hips, sweeping his gaze out over nothing in particular, for nothing was most of what he could see, and startled visibly as Geralt gave a quiet cough.

“Sweet mother of—oh! Geralt, I didn’t even notice you there.”

_Too busy looking for a wolf_ , Geralt thought. 

“What are you doing here, anyway? Ah, I suspected I would find you somewhere around here, you sad sack, you predictable old sod. You’ve drunk too much and found yourself in the bushes, as per usual.”

“It was much quieter in the bushes.”

“I’ll bet.” Dandelion’s hair hung down in front of his face as he leaned over and inspected the bush that Geralt lay beneath, while the egret’s feather reached for him like an expectant hand. “Well, thank the gods it’s not poison ivy, at least. Do you need help getting back up?”

Geralt blinked up at him. The thought of getting up hadn’t even occurred to him. “Not from an owl, nor from a mother hen.”

“Don’t be like that. Come back inside.”

“You go back inside.”

“And leave you alone in the grass while the party carries on just beyond this wall? I think not.”

Dandelion attempted to lean his weight on the cottage, but didn’t seem to realize that the wall was two feet from his hand. He sat down hard on the grass and his feather bobbed comically, bouncing with a mirth that was entirely at odds with the accusatory gaze he gave the cottage for its unreliable support.

“Hmph. Well, this is a lovely little spot, if conspicuously sequestered. And cold. You know, there’s a perfectly nice fire just indoors—”

“Shhhh.”

“—where we could eat and drink and sleep under a genuine roof for a change,” Dandelion finished in a whisper, heeding Geralt’s sentence-length hush. “I suspected you might have crawled into a hole to sleep off your beverage, and that’s your business if you want to be alone, but there’s really nothing stopping you from being alone while staying inside with the rest of us.”

Geralt eyed him for a long moment. Clearly Dandelion had no memory of blabbing their entire secretive mission to Regis and anyone else who may have been listening repeatedly over the course of the night. If he did, it obviously didn’t bother him, and did not seem to keep him from thinking that Geralt, who had perhaps slammed the door behind him a bit too firmly in his ire, would wish to listen to him tell the story of Ciri and Nilfgaard and all the rest again. 

_There is no hole deep enough for me to crawl into where you would not find me_ , he thought. 

Dandelion waited expectantly, and when Geralt gave no response, he huffed and flopped down into the grass, which had long since cooled in the night air and whispered angrily as it was crushed beneath a second body. “So what is it, anyway? The reason you’re out here. It was very kind of this Emiel Regis fellow to open his doors to us, and here you are refusing to come inside like a petulant dog, which reflects rather poorly on the rest of us. Is it that you don’t trust him?”

“Hush,” Geralt said again.

“Why, are you afraid he’s listening?”

“No, I’m afraid you’re going to attract wolves.”

“Ah,” Dandelion said sagely. “Well, at least it wouldn’t startle the children, who are all asleep as we speak. Poor things. Who knows if they’ll ever see their loved ones again. Children without fathers, wives without children and husbands, hungry and hurting and far from their homes... but at least they’re together. Truthfully, I feel worse for the misplaced loved ones of these lost souls. Who knows if they’re dead or alive, captured or killed, prisoners of war or victims of it? And Ciri, too...”

He paused to heave a great sigh, as was often the way of men who found themselves smiling sadly at the stars, and he was suddenly every bit the tragic narrator of his greatest poems and ballads. “I do have some faith that she’s all right, you know, but… it’s the loneliest thing in the world, waiting to be found. I truly cannot think up a worse fate to befall anyone.”

Geralt swallowed and turned onto his side, burrowing himself deeper into the underside of the bush where the stars and sighs would not reach him, but no further musings on war and lost souls came. In fact, he simply heard Dandelion shuffling around in the grass and, to his surprise, felt a hand on his arm after a few moments.

“We’ll find her,” the poet said softly. His breath did not mist visibly in the air, but despite the smell of moonshine gathering like a cloud in the small space between the grass and the greenery, it felt like the most genuine and rational thing he’d said all night. “If she really is in Nilfgaard, we’ll find her. I’m sure she’s okay, and probably thinking of you just as much as you think of her. We’ll spend the morning preparing some supplies and we’ll move even more quickly now, I’m sure of it.”

The silence and the embrace stretched on. Dandelion’s hand remained on Geralt’s arm, warming his skin through his shirt, and the silence and embrace continued for so long that he suspected the poet may have fallen asleep—then to Geralt’s surprise Dandelion was shuffling closer, almost wriggling underneath the bush himself, and he wrapped his arms around Geralt in an unusually protective embrace.

_It’s this bloody moonshine_ , Geralt told himself, though whether he was blaming the distillate for Dandelion’s unexpected tenderness or the tears pricking his eyes he would not attempt to examine in further detail.

“You should go back inside,” Geralt said softly, patting the back of Dandelion’s forearm. “It’s warmer. A bush is no suitable bed for you.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad out here,” Dandelion said, badly feigning nonchalance. “And anyway, someone has to make sure you’re not drinking yourself into a stupor, and we all know that good spirits, while they pleasantly warm the heart and belly and toes and other favourable parts of you, make you more susceptible to the cold, so that’s that.”

“And you’re exempted from the effects of good spirits?”

“Not wholly,” Dandelion admitted, “but you’ll keep me warm, won’t you? And I’ll keep your mind off of those horrid dreams and nightmares you’ve been having so you’ll be well-rested and bushy-tailed in the morning. Unless they’re magical or, gods forbid, prophetic, in which case I cannot help but will gladly provide moral support and gentle encouragement, should you require it.”

Geralt gave the exhausted and decided harrumph of one who had no requirement of moral support or gentle encouragement, and tried once again to think about anything other than his nightmares and the unknown state of Ciri, which proved fruitless as Dandelion would still not stop talking about anything and everything.

“It seems to me that there are more than a few bogus individuals even at Oxenfurt who claim to be capable of divining meaning from dreams... researching common themes and scenarios and relating them to the deepest fears and desires of the psyche... and maybe there’s something to it, I sometimes genuinely believe so, but when psionics and sorcerers are capable of planting thoughts in one’s head and oracles sense your past, present, and future in fog swirling in crystal orbs and odd-smelling hermits can distill liquor from even that terrible mandrake root...”

“Then bogus individuals can divine bogus meanings from dreams, and the rest of us can be free to sleep and dream knowing that someone is likely to profit from our suffering,” Geralt mumbled. He noticed that Dandelion had shoved a leg in between his while he was distracted by their idle conversation, and the Witcher was not entirely certain how he felt about it, save for that it warmed his thighs immensely and made his knee ache slightly less.

“Hm, isn’t that the truth,” Dandelion sighed, patting Geralt’s stomach. “Have you tried simply not dreaming?”

“Have you tried not offending the bushes?” Geralt said, referring to the hand that had quickly crept down his belly and settled on his abdomen, just about level with his hips. “Surely there’s a better time for you to try this.”

“I’m just trying to help you sleep.”

“You listened with the wrong head, I think. I don’t need your aid to sleep, which is what you should be doing, snoring off the drink your new favourite hermit-host has so kindly offered you.”

Dandelion’s hand was lower now. Heat bled from his fingers like a five-pointed star.

“You’re even drunker than I am, bedding down in the bushes,” Dandelion protested. His hand moved lower still, and Geralt wondered idly whether it was Dandelion who had discovered a hungry wolf, or if one had discovered Geralt. “When’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep, anyway? You deserve it.”

“Divine this: sleep makes the dreams worse,” Geralt said somewhat irritably, though his irritation was not at Dandelion’s insistence but at himself, and at the way he was quickly and inadvisably stiffening in Dandelion’s grasp. He felt Dandelion’s breath against the back of his neck and broke out in gooseflesh, the first time he had done so that night despite the early chill in the summer air.

“Right, hence the distraction.”

Geralt inhaled. He hadn’t been cold in the grass before but now his skin felt too warm, particularly his face and his chest, which he knew was not from a prudish blush but from another physiological response. Dandelion kneaded his cock gently but firmly, and Geralt turned his head to give a final warning glance, and found himself tangling his fingers in the poet’s long hair instead, making a sound in his throat which he would forget having made by morning—and that Dandelion would, impossibly, recall many years later—before kissing him.

Dandelion’s fingers were deft, but it took some fumbling and a crack about not remembering which of Geralt’s britches he was supposed to be navigating before he managed to reach inside; twisted partway back, with his fingers threaded through Dandelion’s hair, Geralt made another sound against his mouth and rolled his hips, caught between Dandelion’s warm thigh and warmer hand, which felt somewhat more clever than he’d expected it to be. _That’s always the case with Dandelion_ , he thought, and then decided there were better times to be introspective.

The sounds of revelry and merriment that had been minimally audible through the shack’s wooden walls were gone, as was the chorus of crickets and cheeping of peepers, and even the wind seemed hesitant to disturb the uppermost branches of the trees as Dandelion pulled him close. The grass hissed beneath them as Geralt attempted to turn and was stopped by Dandelion’s thigh, which although pleasant pressing up between Geralt’s legs was now a nuisance, so he disentangled himself and pressed Dandelion into the grass and kissed him again, decisively and then hungrily, and Dandelion’s hands snaked around his waist and held him close as Geralt rocked against the poet’s hip and stifled a moan against his mouth, just sober enough to be courteously quiet but just drunk enough that he had already forgotten he was supposed to be forgetting anything.

Time seemed to tiptoe away from them, leaving the quiet glade locked in stasis until Geralt’s senses returned to him, which only happened after his rutting turned from eager to feverish; Dandelion was, though barely able to see and lacking grace, delightfully responsive, and seemed to know precisely where on Geralt’s ass to grab and hold to urge him forward. The sensation of his clothing against Geralt’s skin was an even better remedy for nightmares and negative thoughts, and in fact the only thought he was able to spare that wasn’t of the firmness of Dandelion’s groin and the heat of his body was that Regis had included some ingredient in the moonshine that was a known aphrodisiac, and that surely everyone inside the shack who had drunk it was doing precisely the same thing that he was doing now.

Then his thoughts returned to Dandelion, and his attention was wholly consumed by the way the bard shuddered and rocked up against him and moaned at such an unabashed volume that Geralt hardly felt bad about clapping a hand over his mouth. Dandelion made an indistinct sound that may have been a protest or an acquiescence or anything else at all, and when that didn’t achieve the desired result he shoved his tongue between his fingers. Geralt grunted and replaced his hand with his mouth, muffling both of them in the most convenient manner he knew how, and ignored the ache in his knee and elbow and rode out the crest of his pleasure in the cradle of Dandelion’s legs.

When he was finished, Geralt pushed himself upright; Dandelion’s chest still heaved with each breath and his hair, freed at last from his feathered hat and fanned over the grass, framed the debauched and somewhat anticipatory face of a man who had yet to find his own release. The poet’s eyes were glassy and dark, and he passed his tongue over his lips as he gazed up at Geralt, who was likely blocking out the only light that Dandelion could see by. 

“Whew,” Dandelion said. “You really are…”

His eyes traveled over Geralt, then down to the spot that Geralt had frotted against for only a few short minutes. Without giving Dandelion the opportunity to embarrass himself by asking for reciprocation—or to complain about the mess smeared into the fabric—Geralt squinted down at the now-sticky fastenings of the poet’s breeches, pulled them open with enough care so as to keep the delicate loops intact, and removed his cock in the same cautious manner before leaning down to mouth at it… or would have, had Dandelion not been faster and demonstrated his desire for reciprocation by fumbling and cursing softly at his clothing, eager to shove his ruined trousers down enough to display his underclothes. He was, for reasons that were unknown to Geralt but likely had to do with age, beverages consumed, or both, perhaps only half-hard, which Geralt was just sober enough to be amused by and just drunk enough to consider a challenge.

He enacted the rest of his plan with flawless execution.

“Oh,” Dandelion breathed, “you fucking devil.” 

His body went taut as a Zerrikanian bowstring when Geralt’s tongue pressed against him like a soft cradle, and his fingers, very subtly trembling, brushed against Geralt’s brow, but moved no further; he took a sharp breath and twitched helplessly in Geralt’s mouth soon after, going as silent as a graveyard, and Geralt waited patiently until he was finished to lean over and spit inconspicuously into the grass.

The sound of the world ebbed slowly back in. Over Dandelion’s shaky breath came the peepers and crickets, the occasional snap of some twig or leaf in the forest adjacent, and eventually the distant sound of Field Marshal Windbag soberly screeching the same sentiment that Geralt himself felt. Even the stars and moon made their presence known again by glittering in the glossy black of Dandelion’s eyes.

“Huh,” the poet said at last, reaching down to scratch himself lazily. He opened his mouth to complete his thought, but noticed apparently for the first time the mess that had cooled considerably quickly in the chill (and stuck to his fingers nonetheless) and made a face before wiping his hand in the grass. “Hm.”

“Cat got your tongue?”

“No, no. Quite the opposite,” Dandelion said softly, lacing his fingers behind his head as Geralt began to tuck himself away. “I feel like I could say... _anything_ , actually. All of the words sit on my tongue, waiting to be organized into sentences, poetry, music, history… and… and I feel I do not have nearly enough worldly time to say any of them.”

“Blame the flask,” Geralt suggested.

“Blame yourself,” Dandelion retorted, wistful one moment and susceptible to the alkaloids within the moonshine the next, then smiled a little and caught Geralt's eye. “Anyway, lie down with me, shut up and listen, would you?”

Geralt didn’t lie down, but he did move off of his knees and sat carefully near Dandelion’s side, idly rubbing his knee, which felt somewhat better thanks to Regis’s loaned medicaments. And probably the distillate. And certain endorphins that still warmed him and made him feel somewhat drowsier than before, though he had not realized it until now. “Listen to what, exactly? The words on your tongue that you don’t have time to say?” 

He lay down.

“No,” Dandelion said, gazing up at the great black sea that was the sky, “ _everything_. The harmony of the moon and stars. That metaphysical and philosophical concept of cosmic movements, the sound of those great celestial bodies that astronomers could only sigh and dream of realizing. And to think those fools in Novigrad are still searching for it, and we’ve found it here, sunk to the bottom of a barber-surgeon’s moonshine flask in Sodden.”

“You could be more clear,” Geralt said.

“And you couldn’t,” Dandelion replied, then laughed. “What irony. You disappeared because you wanted silence, and somehow you managed to find _musica universalis_ instead, the music of the spheres, the sweet ballad of all the universe.”

Geralt thought about it for a long moment. He didn’t know much, nor did he particularly care about what the philosophers and astronomers and metaphysicists and all the rest were researching in Novigrad. As long as the sky didn’t sound like the sweet ballad of war and death in Nilfgaard, the universe could have had any sound it so wished.

“Well, that may be,” he said. “But the fact is we’re a couple of drunken fools, lying disheveled in a field near Fen Carn, providing Regis’s strange plants with an even stranger fertilizer. Let the stars sing what they want.”

Dandelion shifted and slid an arm around Geralt’s shoulders, patting him in the fond and friendly manner of a teacher amused by the innocent and naive exclamations of a novice. Although not heavily muscled, his arm made for a half-decent pillow. Geralt felt his eyelids disobeying his brain’s order to remain open. “Yes, yes, I know, you old dog. You’re exhausted from the journey, your bones are aching, you’re tired of your company… but you’re sated, your belly is full, and most of all, you’re too drunk on fine spirits to care for such trivial things as the world around you, aren’t you?”

_All of that and more_ , Geralt thought, drowsing. _And as for that last fact, you’re only half-right, poet. I’m too sober to not to._

**Author's Note:**

> "It's the loneliest thing in the world, waiting to be found." - Sarah Linden (The Killing) on the bodies of lost children never found by parents;
> 
> "Fall swooned / left me drunk in a field / dandelion wine for a year" - Dandelion Wine (Gregory Alan Isakov)


End file.
